Galoppen at Ibsley Common
20 September 2015
Dear All,
A huge 'Thank You' for all your help that made the WIM Galoppen at Ibsley on Sunday such a success! WIM has a knack of putting on memorable events and this is only because the club has members who are able and willing to do all the various tasks that go to make a successful event.
306 competitors makes this the largest event for some years and to hit the jackpot with both the weather and the Assembly area/Car Park made the day. Our hosts the Andrews family and the Hyde Pre School group thoroughly enjoyed themselves and when the £1 parking charge and income from refreshment sale are put together we helped to raise a truly amazing £740 to be split between the Pre School group and the Local Scouts.
Our Planner, Kevin and his team worked long and hard to get everything ready on the Common for a prompt start and the Start teams and Road Marshals operated an efficient yet relaxed system. Back at Assembly the Parking teams had more than enough space for people to spread out and enjoy the autumn sunshine, whilst unusually Entries and Computing were located indoors with space and mains electricity! Happily Di and John Tilsley our stalwart First Aiders enjoyed a day with no trade.
I hope that all of you enjoyed both helping and a run on your chosen course. We had only one problem with vandalism to control 148 which has now been resolved.
Once again thank you all and I look forward to seeing you at an event soon.
Best wishes
John Warren - Organiser
Part of the Short Green course
© Crown Copyright 2015 OS 100015287
Results
Planners Comments
I was sorry I couldn’t be there on the day due to receiving a ticket for Wales v Uruguay in the Rugby World Cup ballot.
It sounds like I missed a good day: I hope I added to your experiences as Ibsley is quite a difficult place to plan certain courses, as there is very little to hide runners from one another. Therefore I decided to mix you all together going round in different directions with hopefully enough challenges on each course. I tried to complete as many map alterations that I could but maybe I concentrated on the ones that would help you if you were on the correct routes, rather than the ones that would help you if you were on the wrong compass angle, I thought there were enough paths that you could relocate on.
I experienced Ibsley in all weathers, on the Wednesday before the event, the ground was covered in water and blowing a good gale across the tops with the rain going sideways, Friday started beautiful until the heavens opened, Saturday night was so still and in the sunset you could see for miles, Sunday morning the Mist made placing the controls difficult, but made the deer stand out looking at me from their vantage points on the hills, it is a pity we couldn’t have run the event in all the different modes, Rain, Sun, Night and Mist and I didn’t know what type of weather you had until I returned as the Roof on the Millennium stadium was closed all day.
Thank you for Eamon Staunton for taking over my duties, and to Terry Smith for his help in the controlling of the event and putting me right on a number of points. I advised him Ibsley was a fast run and that the courses I planned in 2013 were a little short and that the heather and bracken were lower this year, so this time they were right at the top of the allowed limits, so any faults are all mine
I did raise a glass or two to you all in the afternoon, but I understand I did miss some very good cakes in assembly area, something we should have more of in Orienteering.
Kevin Pickering
Some notes from the Organiser
Organisers spend a lot of time trying to make things happen. Sometimes a pleasure, sometimes a burden, but always a challenge! In Orienteering Events.
Land permission has to be obtained. Ibsley Common used to be owned privately and a quick phone call to the Estate Office usually resulted in permission being readily given. The area is now owned by the National Trust who in common with other public bodies has layers of administrative responsibility. I was fortunate to have met the NT Ranger in his previous job, but it was still necessary to get environmental permission from Natural England. Much to my relief we obtained this in good time and it was a pleasure to welcome the Ranger to the event where he went out with the Controller to see what an Orienteering event looked like in action. The outcome – A fully informed landowner and WIM are likely to get permission for future O activities on local NT land!.
Next is Car Parking and Assembly with the memory of many nightmare sites in the past! Local contacts were the key. We were guests of the Andrews family whose field was ideal. It sloped gently, it had a huge capacity for vehicles and it was near to the Finish and String Courses. The Andrews family are keen Scout Leaders and also involved in Hyde Pre-School group, and thus always looking to raise funds. Your £1 parking fee together with the proceeds of the outstanding refreshments, provided by the playgroup volunteers, raised an amazing £740. Thank you all! Coupled with the glorious weather the assembly field could not have been better sited to enjoy the autumn sunshine.
The unexpected always occurs! A coach arrived unannounced in what for him was a 'dead-end' road, causing a problem at the entrance and resulting in several cars missing the entrance. I'm sorry for the inconvenience but fortunately we managed to turn the coach and relocate it to enable normal service to be resumed.
More concerning was' vandalism' to control 148 in the middle of the event. Evidently the whole unit was uprooted and ended up in the pond but not before being smashed with some force which destroyed the S/I box. After some investigation it seems most likely that the 'vandal' was four legged, probably a cow or pony coming to drink and they stood on the S/I box! All affected competitors have had their Final results re-instated from the provisional results 'disqualification'.
Overall a truly memorable event for WIM. 304 competitors made it our largest event for some years. On the day, once the fog had cleared, the perfect weather and efficient WIM teams made the event one that Organisers dream of!
Thank you all for coming, thank you to all the WIM helpers, our Planner Kevin Pickering, and to the Event Controller Terry Smith of SOC. I hope that we can welcome you to some equally enjoyable events in the future.
John Warren - Organiser
Controller's Comments
Firstly, as the competitor's representative, I'd like to acknowledge and thank the whole Wimborne team, our hosts who allowed use of the parking field and woodland for the String Course and the catering team who provided the much appreciated refreshments.Thank you all!
My role as Controller was an easy one with both an experienced Planner in Kevin Pickering and Organiser in John Warren. We had some discussions about corrected course lengths before the event but went with Kevin's assessment based on previous events held on the area. A winning time of 59 minutes for the Brown course compared well with the recommended elite winning time of 67 minutes. Other courses produced similar scaled results. I'd like to thank Eamon Staunton for managing the planning logistics on the day. It was disappointing to hear that control 148 was vandalised on the day. Those affected were reinstated but I understand the negative impact this might have had on individuals' runs.
I particularly enjoyed my walk around the string course with the brilliant flower drawings at each control and the very visible blue string. Organisationally, the event ticked along like clockwork. The relatively compact location of start, finish, string and car park / assembly area helped greatly. The walk to the start aimed to keep everyone safely off the road and provided a scenic warm-up alongside a forest stream. The finish was a nice down-hill warm-down to download that had the advantage of being inside with mains power; always good for those who run the computing systems.
After the usual controlling checks of signage, start, controls, finish, string, download and car-park etc., I felt very comfortable to be able to go for a walk onto the Common with the local National Trust Ranger who had been invited along by John Warren to see an Orienteering event in progress. We spent probably an hour walking from the Finish, around the Common and back via the Start and taped route to assembly. I am pleased to say that our guest went away with a very positive perspective on our activities, the way the event was organised and the way we conduct ourselves.
Thank you verymuch for providing an excellent example of how orienteering events operate. Apart from the great courses and organisation, my abiding memories of the event include meeting three fallow deer bucks at close quarters while doing initial control checks and standing on a hill summit near the final controls early on Sunday morning watching a fox trot along the path below me heading for the finish!
Thank you all for coming along to reward the efforts of the Wimborne team.
Terry Smith SOC
